


The Last...

by symbolcrash



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-14 05:32:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symbolcrash/pseuds/symbolcrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The TARDIS knew how to mend rooms, how to fly into battle, and how to get where she was most needed in the quickest amounts of relative time. She did not know where to take a Time Lord who himself seemed unmendable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last...

The TARDIS knew how to mend rooms, how to fly into battle, and how to get where she was most needed in the quickest amounts of relative time.   
  
She did not know where to take a Time Lord who himself seemed unmendable.   
  
He hadn’t moved from the staircase for four days. Each rustle of velvet (too old, he thought, I’m too old for this, and went about listing in his mind the numerous ways he should have — and stubbornly  _hadn’t_  — died) met with a preternatural reactive glow from the timeship; each time the lamps flickered hopefully, he sent her a reproachful glare.   
  
He knew it wasn’t her fault. But he wasn’t prepared to accept responsibility, not yet.   
  
The first time it happened, it burned. Oh, it  _seared_. He felt the pain he was supposed to feel — hundreds of thousands of voices, intellects, clamouring  _why, why Gallifrey_  until there was nothing and he was lost again, their oft-reluctant child and Ark. (And they still had the nerve to ask, when he had to pull out of the deal in a constructive way to save his own mind from burning — because even a Time Lord can only go so far — what he was going to do about that “pesky little problem from Skaro.”)   
  
He let out a cry that suggested his own lungs were threatening to drown him out.   
  
The second — the last time — it happened, the last time anything like it would ever happen, the pain he’d been so deliciously anticipating, the pain he felt he _deserved_  — didn’t come. He waited for it as if he were the predator instead of the prey, calmly watching as the roiling ripples of shredded time and pieces of his planet’s core tumbled toward him.   
  
And then he just — wasn’t.   
  
For a flicker of an instant, he ceased to exist. The TARDIS, he could only blandly surmise by that point, hadn’t been able to cope with the thought, and had pulled him out of the time vortex itself, shaving centuries off her own lifespan.   
  
It was either that, he mused bitterly, or dumb luck.   
  
 _Luck had nothing to do with it. And if it is luck, I want no part of it._    
  
Unspeakable. Unspeakable thoughts, actions, carried out over and over, trying to sink to their level, but it was futile in an abyss of hate and pure evil.   
  
He screamed. For all that  _wasn’t_ , he screamed.   
  
In the next second, he was on his feet, scrambling toward the console with a rabid gleam in his eyes. His grin portrayed nothing gentle, nothing charming. “Is that how it’s gonna be?” His voice sounded strange, alien even to him. “Save my life, oh, you sweet girl,” he murmured, “think you’re going to let me get off easy?” A formidable silence descended; the glow extinguished itself as if by a sudden wind. He reeled back and kicked the console with easy rage. “I AM THE ONCOMING STORM! DYING IS  _ALL I HAVE LEFT!_ ”   
  
The TARDIS remained steady in the vortex.   
  
He went on, undaunted, removing the grate from the floor, pulling wires and crystals and couplings of all shapes and sizes from the entangled mess below. “I bet you didn’t even know what you were doing, did you, no,  _no_ , ‘course not, you’re in  _love_  with me,” he taunted, “didn’t know what you were doing because no one in love ever does, and  _that’s_  why — “ his fingers curled around a firm, organic mass, crazed realisation dawning on his face — “we’ll go together. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He smiled, though empty of any mirth at all. “I know I would.”   
  
  
  
**   
  
  
  
He didn’t remember losing consciousness, but he would never forget how it felt to wake up.   
  
Every hangover he’d experienced in every galaxy throughout each of his incarnations seemed to fester in his nervous system all at once, and he dug his fingertips into the grating holes, almost desperate to pull them from his hands in a last, sulking attempt at self-destruction. Ultimately, he failed — but he did manage to give himself a couple of impressive honeycomb bruises on his palms.   
  
The TARDIS hummed on in the not-quite light.   
  
His tongue felt dry and metallic. Even though it felt like his body were being ripped apart to do so, he finally managed to sit up, his fingertips — former weapons — now absently working particulates from his eyes. When he could see clearly (although he highly doubted that would ever truly happen), he lay his head back onto the grating and shivered. He saw too much. He saw too much, knew too much, did too much, and now he had to live too long.   
  
“Why?” he croaked.   
  
They weren’t words returned to him — they never were. But he returned whatever it was with a suitable sneer regardless. “Easy for you to say.”   
  
Except, suddenly, it wasn’t.   
  
Lips slightly parted in solemn, horrible recognition, he let the complete weight of his upper frame fall to his wrists. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”  
  
Hours passed. He couldn’t tell. He supposed he’d never been able to really tell, in the end. The trouble with being a Time Lord was that relative time was meaningless; oh, they’d mucked that one up from the very beginning. Ironically, at the time, it had seemed  _such_  a good idea.   
  
He dragged himself to his feet, feeling the whole of every century settle into his bones. “The last of our kinds,” he said numbly, even though saying it out loud didn’t make it feel any more real. Only the void in his subconscious mind confirmed that. What was he supposed to do with a void? Simple law of thermodynamics, that one.   
  
“Well?” he asked. It was in earnest.   
  
The TARDIS displayed familiar coordinates of her own accord. He sucked in a breath. “No,” he said sharply. “They shouldn’t need me.”   
  
 _They shouldn’t trust me._    
  
A glimmer, like a sigh, went all languid across the controls.  _Oh, Doctor_ , it said.  _You never learn._    
  
 _Maybe you will, in time._


End file.
